JohnStocks.com

Throughout the history of gaming there have been websites and forums dedicated to informing the masses. I have met many new friends through these and love to keep in contact with them even after the games are gone. The one group that stands out the most is Salslak, which originated as a SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) guild/clan/tribe/corp. Their forums went down a few months ago and I thought I had lost contact with them until a good friend linked me to their new forums. Not many of them still play SWG, but we all keep in touch about our latest gaming choices and the forums have grown into subcategories for the different games. World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, City of Heroes/Villains, & Lord of the Rings Online are just a few of the current big hits.

I was trying to update my signature for the forums and realized what I want to post there requires too many characters even though it doesn’t take up as much room. It’s designed to be very slim, but alas it will not fit. I have decided to post my different forum sigs here instead. These should auto update with status changes.

World of Warcraft

City of Heroes

City of Villains

Every summer I make a list of movies I’m eagerly awaiting and this year is no exception.

Iron Man was a Blockbuster smash hit and I saw it twice during the opening weekend. I am a HUGE Iron Man fan and he’s always been my favorite comic book hero - flawed, human, realistic. If you haven’t seen it yet please do, but make sure to stay through the full credits for a cameo appearance and sneak preview.

I’m looking forward to seeing these films as well:

05-16-08 Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
05-22-08 Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
06-06-08 Mongol
06-13-08 The Incredible Hulk
06-27-08 Wall E
07-02-08 Hancock
07-11-08 Hellboy 2
07-18-08 The Dark Knight
08-01-08 The Mummy:Tomb Of A Dragon Emperor
11-21-08 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

These might be good too:

06-27-08 Wanted
08-22-08 Bangkok Dangerous
08-15-08 Tropic Thunder

I updated Wordpress, which  fixed a bug with aNobii Plugin and now they both work. I cleaned up some backend maintenance and the site should load a bit faster.

aNobii works like Flickr, but with books. My library is my most prized possession and I am in the long process of cataloging  everything I own. This is no easy task, for I buy every book I read and I love to read.

CoX Issue 11 has been out for a few weeks & all the new changes have taken place. I have upgraded our Hero and Villain base with the new prestige and am working on a good way to show all of you out of game what it looks like. The Villain base is complete for now, with nothing needing Prestige to add. It has 2/4 teleporters installed with 4/8 possible locations available. I need to level a villain to higher level to unlock the other zones. I even used the Debt wipe to my advantage in getting the 4th beacon from a zone too high a level for me. The Hero base has 4/20 locations and we need more Prestige to add more teleporter rooms for the other teleporter locations.

I also got the chance to tryout some of the new Weapon customizations and Powersets, most notably the Dual Blades. This powerset is unique in that the different powers have added effects based off combos, depending on the order you use the powers. Raoul and I made a Duo team (Destined Hero & Destined Heroine) to level together with him an Earth/Storm controller and I’m a Dual Blades/Willpower scrapper. Our first costume is Pirate based, with ideas for future costumes including Ninjas, Robots, Classic Superheroes, Signature Superheroes, etc. Here is our first costume:

We are pleased to announce that Issue 11: A Stitch In Time will be made available on the Live City of Heroes servers on Wednesday, November 28th. All servers will be coming down for extended maintenance starting at 7 AM Eastern (4 AM Pacific) and we estimate they will be back up by 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific).

This info was compiled from several news updates. Issue 11 adds new Inventions (including a Respec Recipe), Weapons Customization, 2 new Powersets (Dual Blades & Willpower), & time travel using the new Ouroboros System, which opens the gates to both new and existing content for players. Details found here, along with press releases for Weapon Customization, Respecs, and Acquisition Celebrations.

Dear Tabula Rasa Beta Tester,

We’ve got some exciting beta news - There’s been a big content patch! Tons of new
content has been unlocked, including:

To top that off, we’ve also got a brand new batch of keys for all your friends who
missed out on the last batch. These are open to all free registered users, here:
http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/tabularasa/open/

This is your last chance at a sneak peek into Tabula Rasa, so fire up the client,
grab your buddies and get to blasting the Bane!

-The FilePlanet Team

So here it is, the new site. For old times sake the old site is still accessible, but all new posts will be here.

I decided against the MySpace move as I wouldn’t have enough control over it, or at least not the flexibility I want in my projects. Instead, I chose to use a different web blog formula that is more secure. I have been using WordPress for the World of Warcraft guild site I host - The Citadel. It will allow the form and function that I need for this site.

I also decided that the research project I mentioned before would be best organized through a wiki site. For now the JS Wiki Project will be limited in access, but linked from my homepage. A brief summary of this project can be found here. The wiki will allow me to control access to the information , both public and private. At some point I may decide to publish some/all of my findings and that will also be posted here in my blog. The wiki will also allow me to grant access to others for viewing and/or contributing to the research. This organizational step will take time to get started, but make a world of difference once it’s setup completely.

Additional Pages are tumbling around in my head and may eventually show up on the homepage, so keep an eye out for new content. I’m sure there will be posts regarding the more significant additions to come, including picture galleries and such.